Endgame (Crew of Elmwood Public #3)

Chapter 1

KAYLOR

I’d never been locked in a room before where I couldn’t come and go as I pleased.

I guessed it came with the territory of being kidnapped.

It didn’t just suck. It was terrifying yet…

also boiled my blood. I was so fucking mad at Rusty, a rage I’d never felt before, so much stronger than Kreed’s betrayal.

I wasn’t sure what time it was anymore, if time even flowed the same way in this suffocating box they called a room. The absence of natural light warped my internal clock beyond recognition, leaving me adrift in an endless present tense of captivity.

I kept count with someone clinging to the brink of sanity because I needed something to anchor my mind to. Something concrete and measurable to focus on, instead of the inferno raging inside my chest. Something other than the brutal reality that I’d been stripped of my dignity and my freedom—again.

This time, though, it wasn’t Kreed’s betrayal doing the cutting.

It was Rusty’s.

My father’s best friend, who had spent an entire Saturday teaching me how to change a flat tire in the driveway, his patient voice guiding my small hands as I struggled with the lug nuts. Rusty, who had lied to my fucking face when he’d sworn to always look out for me.

His deception stung deeper than Kreed’s ever had, slicing through places I hadn’t even known were vulnerable.

Kreed broke my heart, shattering it into a thousand glittering pieces that were only just now reassembling.

But Rusty destroyed something foundational I’d built my entire sense of safety upon.

And in the hollow space where that trust used to live?

A fire took root.

A violent one, burning hotter with each passing hour.

I never wanted to hurt someone before. Not like this.

Not with my own hands wrapping around their throat, not with my fingers digging into soft flesh until something vital gave way.

But when I thought about Rusty, the grating sound of his voice as he’d spoken about selling me, the calculated way he’d manipulated my grief and desperation, I wanted to watch the life drain from his eyes.

I wanted to be the last thing he saw before the darkness claimed him.

And the most terrifying part? I didn’t think I’d feel a single fucking ounce of remorse.

My mind wandered to the video Rusty forced me to make, a message to Kreed. I’d laughed in his face when he ordered me to read the script. He was a bigger idiot than I thought.

I just prayed Kreed got the hidden message I’d left. Regardless, I had to believe he would come…that he would move heaven and earth to find me. Or, in this case, stroll through the gates of hell because this was undoubtedly the fiery pits of the underworld.

The camera blinked again, its red eye recording every moment of my captivity for whatever sick audience waited beyond the lens.

328.

I flipped it off, my middle finger held steady for a full three seconds before I lowered my hand. “Enjoy the show, assholes,” I muttered.

Who was watching this digital peep show?

Rusty himself, getting off on seeing me finally under his control?

I was the last thread tying him to my parents’ murders.

Or was it some anonymous suit in a climate-controlled office three states away?

Or worse, some perverted bidder sitting behind his computer screen, one hand on his credit card and the other doing things I refused to let my mind imagine.

My stomach rolled with nausea, bile rising in my throat, but I couldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me curl into myself. Instead, I rolled out of the narrow bed, doing my best to project strength I wasn’t sure I possessed.

I wasn’t staying in here waiting to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

I wasn’t going to sit passively while some sick freak slapped a dollar sign on my life and called it commerce.

I was getting out of this nightmare. I had to find a way, and despite believing Kreed would find me, I couldn’t sit and wait to be rescued.

The window became my first target.

I crossed the small room, the old wooden floors creaking under my bare feet.

My fingers traced the boarded-up window frame, searching for weaknesses, for anything to give me an advantage, but unless I got my hands on a crowbar, the boards weren’t fucking budging.

The curtains were fake too, just decorative fabric stapled to a wooden frame.

Between the cracks in the boards blocking any view of the outside world, I could only see patches of snow, nothing significant to give me any idea where the hell I was.

I pressed my fingers along the edges where the wood met the frame, pushing and pulling, searching for even the smallest amount of give.

Nothing. The installation was professional, permanent, and recent, considering the rest of the room looked like I just stepped out of the Victorian era.

Each piece of furniture came straight from an antique shop or had been here a really, really long time, a frightening thought considering my current predicament.

I was starting to get a sick feeling that this operation had been going on longer than Rusty’s reign.

I moved on to the floral-covered walls.

My palms ran across textured surfaces, revealing nothing useful.

No visible screws I could work loose, and the air vents weren’t big enough to fit one of my legs, let alone all of me.

Just wallpaper and plaster. I knocked against it with my knuckles.

Only a hollow sound came back, telling me these walls were lined with soundproofing material, no doubt designed specifically to trap people and muffle their screams. Rusty had spared no expense in this place.

Or whoever owned it. How many other rooms were like this one?

How many other girls like me were trapped?

How many others had been sold, lost to their families?

God, how the hell did I end up here?

This was supposed to be my senior year of high school.

I should be having the time of my life prepping for college and going to prom and parties with my friends.

I should be making dumb decisions like falling in love with the wrong guy.

Well, I somehow managed to do that even while my life had been thrust into constant chaos.

The door remained as unyielding as ever and didn’t budge an inch when I threw my full body against it in a burst of pure, desperate spite.

The impact sent shock waves through my shoulder, but the door didn’t so much as rattle in its frame.

God, there must be something I’d missed.

Some tiny flaw in their perfect prison I could exploit.

I dropped to my knees on the hard, uneven floor, my fingers searching along the edges where the planks met the walls.

I checked for loose boards or hidden gaps, anything to indicate a weakness in their construction.

My fingernail caught on something sharp, a splinter of wood tucked beneath the corner of the bedpost.

I pried at it with growing excitement, but it yielded nothing more than a few flakes of timber. My shoulders slumped, and I stuck my fist into my mouth and screamed, muffling the sound. I couldn’t give up hope. Not yet.

I was turning back toward the bathroom to continue my search when I heard it.

Click.

The noise froze my blood in my veins, every muscle in my body going rigid with sudden alertness. Another followed, closer and more definitive.

Click. Clunk. Clink.

The locks. All three of them disengaging one by one in succession.

My heart shot into my throat as I spun to face the door, my breath caught mid-exhale and trapped in my lungs. Ice crawled down my spine, but I forced myself to take a step back, to set my jaw and straighten my spine despite every instinct screaming at me to hide.

Not today.

Not without a fight that they’d remember.

Whoever was about to walk through that door, whether it was Rusty or worse, they’d better be ready to bleed because I wasn’t the broken girl they thought they’d locked up in here. Not anymore.

I was something harder. Something angrier. Something with absolutely nothing left to lose.

I stared at the door as the handle twisted, and a woman walked through with her head held high. She had cold blue eyes and raven hair pulled into a severe chignon that didn’t move despite her measured steps. A sweet and expensive perfume trailed behind her, wafting into the room.

The fuck?

A woman?

I don’t know why I assumed this was an entirely male operation. Perhaps because my brain couldn’t wrap itself around the idea of another woman subjecting a woman to such inhumanity.

She carried a silver tray balanced on her palm like she was serving afternoon tea at some upscale hotel instead of feeding a prisoner in a human trafficking operation.

The contents looked almost mockingly normal, scrambled eggs still steaming slightly, buttered toast cut into precise triangles, and wedges of pink grapefruit, as if proper nutrition mattered inside the walls of hell.

She set the tray down on the vanity, the metal surface making a soft clink against the wood. “You need to eat,” she said, her voice carrying the flat authority of someone stating an immutable fact.

“I’m not hungry,” I replied defiantly, testing her.

She shrugged. “Suit yourself, but starving yourself will only make them angry, and trust me…you don’t want to see what happens when they’re angry.”

Who the hell were they? I didn’t move. Didn’t even blink. My body remained frozen, every muscle locked in stubborn refusal. “You mean Rusty?”

She smoothed her hands down the front of her pristine white blouse, the fabric stretching taut across her torso. Her black heels clicked against the floor as she shifted. “I understand you had a personal relationship with him, but that ended the second you were brought through that door.”

Personal relationship, my ass. “Trust me, I wish I’d never fucking met him.”